I honestly think that they both make great cpus ,it just depends what you want to do with them.My house is pretty much balanced 50/50 for each of them,simply because I think there both overall great companies,and I like to support both of them.

While I'm not an AMD fanboy I do like the cheaper solution than intel has to offer. Intel burnt it's bridge with when I bought a tulantin compatible board and a cheaper cpu to tide me over. Then Intel decided not to release the p2 tulantin cpu to the general public because it was crushing their new P3. I eventually bought that tulantin cpu off ebay but was still stuck with a 512 memory max due to the chipset and bios never being patched.

Intel was basically forcing my hand to upgrade which is when I decided to go to AMD and I've never looked back... The upgrade paths in AMD have been outstanding on the pocket book. I will be purchasing my 5th or 6th amd cpu since am1 to am2 to am3 to am3+ I've been able to play every single video game on AMD since quake 3/rocket arena 3 with no issues. I cannot justify spending 800 dollars on a cpu when a 2 or 300 dollar AMD will work just as well. Top that with 2-300 dollar MAX on a top of the line AMD mobo like the crosshair V and how can you really go wrong?

I've been AMD fanboy for since Athlon Xp 2500+ days and today all my systems run Intel.

AMD provided great value and good performance even to Phenom II era. AMD haven't offer competitive product on any level today. Their performance to watt ratio lacks any competitiveness, nothing is too oustanding and even those workload that require multi-core, Intel CPU can handle just as well with less cores. In any budget/type of system I have very little reason to recommend AMD CPU.

My favorite AMD product right now is the E350 and E450 which is almost 2 years old. I really hope that AMD can come out with a product that can compete not just in performance but also with the power consumption.

I was a huge AMD fan for the longest time. I still have a K6-2 450mhz that while hasn't been powered on in a couple years now still worked last I checked! My final AMD box had a DFI Lanparty with an X2 (don't remember the speed). I switched over to Intel with a Q6600 and now a 3570K. Due to work I need the extra horsepower (will upgrade to the 3770k soon) and AMD just doesn't have performance that I need anymore. Add to that the extra heat and power consumption and it takes them right out of the picture for the higher end chips. Wouldn't hesitate to go back to AMD if they ever make a comparable product though. I've always been a fan of the underdog and AMD has made some great chips.

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Create something idiot proof and they will make a better idiot.
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I love amd, but their focus is (and has been for the last bit) on APU for the growing market of laptops/netbooks/etc etc (and rightly so given the market trends). They still offer good cpus at good prices, but the power usage kills the deal for me (unless you can really take advantage of those threads). Buying new right now I have to say intel has it in the bag, unless you are in the market for a budget general use/light gamer (then get an APU), or need max threads on the cheap (then go fx). My x3 710 has got another bit of life in it on my ddr2 board....the upgrade path with AMD is nice....always keeping an eye out for a CHEAP x4 965 or x6 1090t that could slot in (otherwise I will wait for a new platform in a year or so).

Sorry for bringing back this slightly necro'd thread, but I think use-case is an important way to look at things too.

Being a bit of a utilitarian I've never been a "vendor" guy. I may prefer AMD nowadays due to their Canadian connection with ATI, but that is more of a patriotic thing. I think there are innovations going on with both companies, though I'd say for gaming enthusiasts Intel has the edge right now due to higher IPC and performance per thread on the desktop CPU side of things.

For virtualization I love the FX-8320/8350 chips because they run fast enough in general PC usage and, with the 990fx chipset have full VT extensions and an IOMMU, as well as allowing some overclocking (though heat limited). There are also the Opteron 62xx/63xx chips for 16-core super virtualization on a single CPU for ultra-cheap (comparatively).

For Intel I've been a bit underwhelmed by SB and IB while loving SB-E. I had to de-lid my 3770K to get it to high overclocks and manage heat, while my i7 3820 is humming along at nearly the same speed (4.85 versus 4.9 on IB) and doesn't go past 75 celsius on cores, which I think is great. Also going to 3930K you get a current upgrade path, like we did from Nehalem to Gulftown on original i7 LGA1366.

For folding@home, AMD all the way. The Opterons may consume more power, but with a bit of overclocking on select Supermicro mobos (thanks to a guy named Tear) they can become Point per Watt kings. If I want an economical folding@home rig, the Xeon E5-2650 or 2680 are great for a dual-CPU folding@home or virtualizaton monsters, and are also pretty thrifty on power but basically un-overclockable. My e5-2650 rig is only 275 watts with BOTH CPUs at full load, and the E5-2680 is around 100W more with both CPUs folding and utilized at 100%.

I also think for HTPC if I want to game a little bit without a discreet card the AMD APUs are great at this time, as well as the performance that can be improved from OC and higher RAM speeds on the IGP side of things.

__________________Xeven: How about 10^8.450980400142567e-001 -as a possible replacement for "10e"